Fallen Angels
by Omnicat
Summary: In the end, there is chaos. MAJOR ANGST. Set after episode 25, AU take on the beginning of the timeskip. Setsuna x Feldt.


**Title:** Fallen Angels

**Author:** Omnicat

**Rating:** T

**Genre:** ANGST. All caps, yes.

**Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** Up till episode 25. Seriously, this'll spoil you badly if you haven't watched season one to the end yet.

**Warnings:** ANGST, suggestions of sex.

**Pairings:** Setsuna F. Seiei x Feldt Grace

**Disclaimer:** Nope, not mine.

**Summary:** In the end, there is chaos. MAJOR ANGST, set after episode 25. Setsuna x Feldt.

**Author's Note:** Okay, this is... odd. Until close to the end of season one, I didn't care about Setsuna _at all_. For 24 episodes Bandai/Sunrise failed to make me sympathize with/feel for the little wannabe Heero-clone ball of emo, but one mourning scene with Feldt and poof! Instant bunnies.

Also, to save this from being entirely AU, here's the backstory: Once all the enemy MS have left the area, the surviving Ptolemaios crew members (Feldt, Sumeragi and Ian Vasty) go out looking for the Meisters, or the Meisters' remains, at least. Feldt tracks down Exia in a rather precarious position (the 'breakaway limit zone') and manages to climb into the cockpit right at the moment the mobile suit gets sucked in by Earth's gravity. She somehow manages to take control of Exia and slow their fall just enough to keep them alive upon impact. Only barely, mind...

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**Fallen Angels**

In the end, there is chaos. The vengeful angels that had plagued the world are shot down one by one, scattered across the heavens to fall to Earth as shooting stars.

Setsuna and Feldt fall together, the scorched and wrecked Exia making a crater that almost matches the gaping hole in their hearts. She drags him from the wreckage and he bleeds on her shoulder as they flee, perhaps not to safety, but to shelter, at least.

Feldt knows little about normal life, but she knows how to hack and how to lay bandages, and before the analgesics have so much as worn off she has them tucked away in a mediocre, anonymous apartment complex in a city nearby, the cheapest she could find without cockroaches. Hidden in plain sight, just two reserved, sullen teens in a sea of faces.

On mutual agreement and to mutual satisfaction, not much is said after they've compared stories and pieced together the tale of Celestial Being's destruction. Neither had been a social person before the world turned upside down, and neither feels much inclined to change in the aftermath.

Together they establish a strict routine: a change of bandages every morning and evening at eight, breakfast and dinner half an hour after that, lunch at noon. She cleans the two small rooms they inhabit every four days, replenishes their food supply the day after that. He stays in bed for the first couple of weeks, then hobbles to and fro between the double bed they share and the kitchen counter trice daily; though the food is still quite plain, he cooks better than her, and they both know it.

Feldt says "Thank you." the first time, to which Setsuna replies "It's no trouble.", and they never mention it again.

In between, Setsuna rests his battered body and Feldt roams the city in search of computer terminals. No matter how tight their schedule, everything feels chaotic, unstable. It's all an aftermath. The dust refuses to settle. They have been cast adrift, left to be tossed about in the wake current of their mission's... demise? completion? The world is changing, just as they have striven for, but the ones who had made it happen struggle and stumble to keep up.

Setsuna nor Feldt complains, but when they look each other in the eye they can tell that neither had expected it to be like _this_. Celestial Being had been home to them, no matter how much the meaning of the word had to be skewed; stability and refuge and comfort and family, and neither will say it, but _I want to go home_.

Eye contact is almost as scarce as conversation.

They follow the news with anxious knots in their stomachs, desperate for clues as to the fate of their mother - _Miss Sumeragi_ - brothers - _Allelujah, Tieria_ - grandfather - _Ian Vasty_ - but more afraid to learn of their deaths, of more losses like father - _Lockon_ - niece - _Christina _- nephew - _Lichty_ - uncle - _Lasse_ -, than they remember ever having feared for their own lives.

Knowing how dependent they have both become on these people is perhaps most frightening of all to the distant, stoic war orphans they know themselves to be. But experienced though they are at pushing the feelings aside, loneliness and abandonment, loss and yearning are hard to banish completely.

Memories keep replaying in his mind as Setsuna stares at the walls, and Feldt's heart skips a beat every time she spots _their_ hair colour in the crowd.

When he scoots over to her side of the bed at night and presses close, an arm tight around her waist, neither says anything about it. Communication has never been either of their strong points, but they recognize basic human need when they see it. Threading her fingers through his and squeezing his hand is clear enough; no words are needed.

Setsuna doesn't like to be touched and Feldt is uncomfortable reaching out to people, but the reasons they had in the past are rapidly losing ground to the swirling void of the present. So they hold on to each other, anchoring themselves in the face of tomorrow's looming shadows with a warm body against their own that breaths rhythmically, holds on just as tight in return, is alive. But most of all, is just _there_. Not going anywhere. No fight needed to keep the other with them or make them change, Feldt turning around willingly upon prompting, so Setsuna can tuck her body, tangible and firm and smelling of cheap soap, into his arms and lay his chin atop her head while her fists tangle in the front of his shirt.

They know they can't go on like this forever; sooner or later Feldt's cyber-thefts will be discovered, or the neighbours will become suspicious, or the UN finds something in the wreckage orbiting the Earth that links them to the gundams, and starts looking for them. There is little Feldt can find out in seedy internet cafes, using low-power public computers and sharing connection with twenty others. Once Setsuna feels strong enough they make their way to where Exia crashed in a last ditch effort, seeing no other option.

No super computer, no weapons of mass destruction, no secret communications network. Without the means Celestial Being provided them with they have reverted back to the used, robbed and abandoned children they were before, desperate and helpless, trapped in a world they cannot help but shy away from after everything it has done to them.

It would have been wishful thinking to the point of stupidity to expect the site to be untouched after so many weeks, but what greets them comes as a shock nonetheless. The UN has found their gundam, and priers are not welcome.

On the way back, Setsuna leans heavily on Feldt's shoulders - even more so than on the way there. What strength he had regained left him the moment the proof of his gundam's fate sank in, and he collapses onto the bed the moment the door of their apartment closes behind him. Sobs wrack his body, wretched howls of the kind he hasn't allowed himself to let out since Lockon's death tearing from his throat. Feldt gathers him up in her arms, where he buries his face in her shoulder and screams his wordless agony while she presses her own face into his hair and tries to remember how to breathe.

And then it all seems to be happening in a daze; inexperienced lips pressing against a mouth that cannot not tell apart blunder from success, hands groping their way into unfamiliar territory, fumbling with alien pieces of clothing. Once their eyes meet neither can tell who makes the first move. Primal urges take over, their bodies gravitating towards what seems to be the only source of life and heat and answers left in the world, inhibitions forgotten.

They taste salt on each other's lips, stumble over each other's limbs, press against each other's flesh as if trying to melt their bodies together. It's as painful as it is pleasurable, so Feldt weeps for Lockon and Christina and everyone else they've lost, and Setsuna tries to live up to the legacy he's been left with as they move together, driven by the promise of what they both need but not knowing how to get it.

The end is as much a disaster as it is a victory, and it feels like an allegory of their entire lives at that point. Exhaustion renders their heart and mind empty, leaving only their bodies shaking at a similar invisible, bone-deep frequency. They remain that way, clutching the only thing left to them, lost and lonely but together in their pain, until Miss Sumeragi comes to take them home.

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**PSAN:** Sorry about those capslock. Post-ANGST bout of perkiness.


End file.
